My First TPK - RPG War Stories
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ก.พ. 2021
- Recounting the adventure when the players' dice murdered the entire party, as well as the story of The Fiendish Nazi Mummies of the Third Reich (my favorite adventure title, ever).
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Guest starring The Gang and Jack the NPC.
#TTRPG #Cyberpunk - เกม
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Yeah.... I am sorry I threw the grenade. Well not really.....
Rest in peace, Oliver. This story will always be one of my favorite memories of you. I'm glad you got to see it shared with the world.
"I guess the real threat to our safety were the friends we made along the way."
Yeah, the 'muricans call it "Friendly Fire".
Though for us other people it is difficult to see how it is friendly.
Perhaps it have something to do with their "Civil War"?
I do not know why they think that to be civil.
@@larsdahl5528 I don't know if this is facetious or not, so I'm going to take it seriously.
Allies are called "friendlies", a counterpoint to "enemies". "Friendly fire" is a reference to that, meaning accidental fire upon one's allies or their own unit.
@@larsdahl5528 ... the hell are you on about?
@@larsdahl5528 "Friendly fire isn't."
- Murphy's Laws of Combat
Its an IFF misfire designation meaning someone FUBAR-ed and misidentified friendlies as hostiles and took shots at them by mistake or accident. Its friendly meaning you accidentally targeted a friend along the way to victory.
Seth's player: I am going to throw a grenade.
Me, a long time viewer: oh no
sounds about right
I immediately recalled the grenade anecdote when he mentioned grenades. I don't blame them now for being afraid of those things.
"I'm gonna do what's called a Throw Grenader move."
Ah grenades. The cause of and the solution to all our problems.
Video uploaded 1 minute ago
Comment made 15 hours ago
*What?*
@@YahyaFalcon Patreon early access to the video.
@@FuriousJorge oh ok.
Atomic bombs are sort of like large grenades NOT!?
😇 😇 😇
There is no problem that cannot be solved with the proper amount of well placed explosives.
I like how they wanted to run away from the mummies, yet the real threat was themselves.
"Maybe the real Nazi Mummies of the Third Reich were the explosions we made along the way."
@@suedenim LOL!!
"The attack rolls are coming from other party members! Get out of there!"
"...but it was too late!..."
Probably trying to get away from the mummies out of embarrassment. LOL
My daughter has taught our Animal Crossing villagers to say "Dweebles". So he lives on.
-Mike: "Oh damn, I shot my friend!",
-Todd, sadly cocking the Tommy: "Im gonna have to put you down, buddy.."
Dweebles, in the back of the group: “Don’t worry, we’ll be there soon....”
"I can't believe you just shot our friend in the back of the head!"
"I'm sorry, it was an accident!"
"So is this." *raises Tommy Gun*
Fate teaching you, Never bend over for that bar of soap
The old Deep Star Six scene with the harpoon...
The last scene is a fade in on the ruins, a subtitle tells us it's 2021. A team of archeologists are excavating the ruins as what was once Dweebles rises up from underneath the rocks the team is displacing. A blue gem is clutched in his desiccated hand...
Part 2 when?
...and he fumbles it.
"Luck is probability taken personally." --Penn Gillette
"Call it fate, call it luck, call it karma, I believe everything happens for a reason"
@@Tony-dh7mz why? And who are you quoting, yourself?
@@rolandkushm.d.710
"You never studied"
"Aim for the flattop"
@@kevinschmidt6343
"And the flowers are still standing!"
“Oh god, I accidentally killed my friend!”
“Then I’m afraid I can’t trust you to not kill me too.”
"This is not how to shoot your buddy, THIS is how you shoot your buddy". Died laughing.
"In that sense they won." I cried laughing at this story, absolutely incredible.
Man, CP2020 fumbles are no joke. Whisper's head is still floating around in an Arasaka jar somewhere in Asia because of those.
So, a literal example of: "Rocks fall, everybody dies!" 😁
Nazi Mummy: "That adventure was terrible, downvote."
Enemies were glitched, attacked each other. Bug reproducible.
Hello Seth, commenter here, and today I'm going to boost your algorithm.
"Hello internets"
This is important. Very insight.
Totally true that we remember the big fails way more. In our group we have "famous last words" references all the time. "Maybe they're friendly?" - they were not... "Throw whatever you have that's stronger!" - bad idea when it's a lightning bolt in a closed space... While the group is resting "I'll just open this door and see what's inside" - death! etc.
Nice video.
A player in my game "I'm the only one trained in thrown weapons. Everyone hand me your grenades".
The same player: "You know that pile of dice you told me to roll for the grenades? They've all turned up 1".
Me: "A pin lands neatly between the group of vampires the team is ambushing. You notice your friends backing away from you"
It's fitting that the mummy's curse would take until the far future to finally be broken.
As an aside, Mummies In Space is a cheesy horror concept that, to my admittedly limited knowledge, has not been attempted yet. You can either run it as "normal" human mummies from ancient Egypt that have risen in the far future, Dracula 3000 style. Or it could be alien mummies from a dead alien civilization.
EDIT: Wait, no, I forgot about the Necrons. In my defense, though, those are _robot_ alien mummies. I'm talking about regular mummies.
i love how the greatest threat to the pcs was the pcs themselves XD
Death "Flawless Victory"
FIGHT!!!
Isn't it always?
Not once has one of my PCs died due to insurmountable odds, every single one has died due to the player making bad decisions.
Not even bad luck accounts for the deaths by the way, it was the players steadfast refusal to retreat that got them killed.
@@Daredhnu sometimes your your own worst enemy lol
I love to see you playing different characters.They all look so independent and aware of their surrounding characters.
Yeah I could watch videos of Seth, Mike, Dweebles, and Todd all day. The 3 stooges have got nothing on these guys.
Most memorable story: When I died in first action of first round of combat in the first combat of a brand new campaign. And I was never attacked.
So story time:
We were starting it, the campaign start was we were on a task to protect a tower where monks prayed from a bandit threat. I am a ranged combat ranger in 2e. So I roll high on initiative and go first when bandits showed. So I shoot!
1... Roll on our fumble table... 1... Break weapon...
Okay, well I got melee backup, so I am going to use move action to climb down the ladder so I can assist next round.
"Make a climb check because it is combat and you are in a hurry..."
1...
Make a reflex save to catch yourself from falling.
1...
Okay.... you fall and take.... (30 ft) of fall damage.
...
I am level 1.... and.... dead!
Fortunately GM was a nice guy, and said I fall and splat to the ground beside the cleric. Seeing this, the cleric is able to cast a heal on me before I am dead dead because reacted so fast.
I actually have only had a TPK in oneshots where PCs are likely to or supposed to die. I did a hidden agendas oneshot where one player was the murderer and he managed to kill every NPC and every other player while remaining hidden. The other players were pretty surprised to find out they were getting killed by one of their own.
I did one where the party were in a town overrun by zombies. What they didn't know was that one of the players was secretly the villain, and was actually controlling the zombies with a magic amulet (slipping me notes to control the movements of the horde). Every time one of the other players died they immediately resurrected as a boss zombie and switched teams. No TPK, but she got at least three of the others onto Team Zombie before the survivors realised what was going on and took her down. Of course, then the amulet resurrected her too. Suffice it to say, things got messy.
If this adventure and conversion rules was made into a pdf or a physical book I’d totally buy it.
My husband has the WORSE dice luck. Doesn't matter which system or if it's an electronic dice roller from a forum. I keep telling him he needs a rubber chicken foot... ;)
The positive effect of a chicken's feet has also been circumstantially confirmed... though ours were still attached to the chicken, who also served as an impartial arbiter for the game.
I would like to tell 2 dice issues that have me convinced my dice luck is about as bad.
1. Playing an Elf Fighter with Elven Accuracy, Advantage on the attacks, and 3 attacks. Managed to roll 9 ones in a row.
2. Random rolling stats through 4d6 drop the lowest. Totals after dropping the "lowest": 3, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10
First game I ever ran. First session. First combat. Grenade. Fumble. Every player but one goes down.
The curse is real...
Oh yeah, Cyberpunk can be brutal and unforgiving as it should be. Awesome war story.
Oh hi there. I see you too are a fan of really great TH-cam channels.
Yes, and in the opposite end some extreme results was possible too.
I played a Med Tech who saved someone at death stage 3 from dying!
3:36 Ooh, I'm torn, do I want to play Christian Slater or Steve Buscemi?
"Aw man, I shot Dweebles in the face."
"Why the fuck'd you do that?!"
"Well, I didn't mean to do it, it was an accident. The dice probably went over a bump or somethin'."
@@robpegler6545 "The dice didn't hit no motherfucking bump!"
"...figured I'd share another war story video, with you guys."
I think I can speak for everyone when I say, feel free to think that way as often as possible.
I have never laughed out loud while watching a video about RPG stories.
Today was the last day I could say that line.
War ... war never changes ... well until it does due to a fumble :P
Friendly fire is never friendly
Wars are mostly fumbles, honesty.
1. This video is great.
2. The production values are increasing, but not in a "take away from the fun" way.
3. Seth's quaran-hair game *STRONG*
Your "Keep calm and bombshell" t-shirt cracked me up.
My first TPK: Call of Cthulhu + idiots with dynamite and failed luck rolls
Can you elaborate please?
Haha thats like every Keepers story!
Reminds me of something I was the Keeper for: One of the investigators insisted at carrying a keg of gunpowder around, and at a climax where he realised to be looking at two undeads; an unlucky sanity roll resulted in the loss of 5 (or was it 6?) sanity points, enough for a temporary insanity, I ruled that he momentarily lost control; instinctively set and lit the gun powder keg and ran off, the rest of the group figured the best they could do was to run too.
Well... The group survived, but the story ended there, as all possible continuations of the story got blown up.
@@hakeem2656 long story short, the investigators found a mythos creature in a min shaft in West Virginia that was poisoning all the workers.
They decided to use dynamite to implode the tunnel.
The investigator failed his explosives roll and I basically said that the wick wasn't as long as he thought. Everyone was at the bottom of the shift. What happened next had to be nearly statistically impossible.
I made the group give me a group luck roll, of more passed than failed, they'd have plenty of time to escape. They all failed their luck rolls.
I then gave them any check of their choosing to figure out how to get out of this mine shift quickly before it caved in. Dex, body, strength intelligence...anything. They all failed.
So finally I gave them one last luck roll to see if there was any chance of getting out and surviving. I kid you not, they all failed.
I did everything I could to help them out, but fate wasn't on their side that day. The mine shift was about 800 meters deep, and there wasn't enough time to get out with all their failed rolls.
In the end, I had to stay true to what happens when 10 sticks of dynamite goes off in a mine shaft with PC's at most 400 meters away.
They all died due to the cave in and blast.
All the players loved it. We still talk about it. How there were so many bad rolls. No one was mad, everyone understood that at that point, the investigators deserved to die and fate wasn't on their side.
So now we joke about them being "idiots with dynamite who check the wicks". It's a silly story to us!
*edit* I'm typing this out on a new phone keyboard so if there's some grammar errors my B. I'm not great at using a phone keyboard haha.
Mine didn't TPK owing to being split up, but we had one CoC adventure where some of us were crawling around an underground cultist warren and one of the PCs had brought a dozen sticks of dynamite we'd found in a crate upstairs. We heard chanting coming from around a corner, so the guy lit a stick to throw as soon as he stepped up - whereupon he saw something awful (we never did find out exactly what), went insane and catatonic and collapsed, sputtering dynamite still in hand. The two PCs who were with him immediately ran like hell as the chanting changed to shouts, and had almost gotten far enough away when the "boom" came. The GM was going to be "nice" and give the comatose guy a chance to survive (dynamite was 3d6 damage in those days, IIRC) to be captured by the cultists (some of whom would also probably live) but (bastards that we are) we gleefully pointed out that the other 11 sticks of dynamite would detonate in the blast. The explosion collapsed the whole shrine on top of whatever-it-was inside of it, as well as burying the other PCs, although they did (with some outside help from the rest of the group) manage to dig themselves out before their air ran out.
Thirty-odd years later and I still have no idea what Steve's exploding corpse killed down there.
At last another war story! Thank you!
Good job on having the first comment my dude, fast man.
The theatrics when he dropped the grenade, top notch! xD
My first TPK was also a direct result of the PCs. Specifically one player, who thought it was smart to start a fire with lots of oil splashed about in the hold of a pirate ship whilst they were many days away from shore... THEN proceeded to attempt a heist on the captain's quarters.
The best quote (in retrospect):
"We die?! But you didn't even roll for damage!"
Wish it had not been said seriously.
Don't forget to write Fumble Doom on your grenades. And always remember, once you pull the pin Mr.Grenade is no longer your friend.
I ran a Hackmaster campaign years ago. More characters died in that campaign than all of my other campaigns combined. I had a player character take an hour and a half to build his character and then died 45 minutes later.
>Laws of probability
drakerejection.jpg
>RULES OF NATURE
drakeacceptance.jpg
>Laws of causality
gutsangry.gif
Nervous Arabic Accent: "..It is.....it is THE MUMMIES CURSE!!!!......."
Btw,
Zombies = All Flesh Must Be Eaten
(A great RPG using a system that melts away in game play, its the best Zombie game)
And
Nazi Zombie = Hellboy GURPS
yes there was a Hellboy RPG (brownie points if you can find it in the limited edition hardcover)
"You'll get yours Beni!"
"Sorry Dweebles."
I remember playing Apocalypse World, my character, a Driver, trying to save a team mate while he was throwing grenades to an apocalyptic vegetal monster... He kept fumbling and making both of us take damage until we both died...
"Let me save you!" Was my phrase and a running joke for a time...
Nothing tells a player that no matter how bad things are going, they're about to get a lot worse, quite like "Let me save you."
The funny thing is he didn't let me. Hahahaha I think it was 3 times he failed and I kept checking trauma boxes and getting disadvantages yo avoid death... I ran out of boxes... Hahaha
my first tpk was in the warhammer 40K ttrpg, my players found a land raider ( basically a tank on steroids) and drove it at full speed in a hive city.
They drove int a house, that crashed on top of them, critically damaging the transport, that then proceded to blow up.
0:02 - hard on the heels of watching "What Bug?" I started this video to be confronted with a t-shirt proclaiming "KEEP CALM AND BOMBSHELL" and promptly laughed uncontrollably for a full minute.
This needs to be a short film. The ending can read "Based on a true event."
War stories is my favorite. I love seeing Seth, "Mike", "Dweebles", and "Todd" showing us how role-playing should be done. Fun and deadly to all.
"The dice, despite the odds, decide to murder us" hahahahaha loved it :D
Always cracks me up when Todd says "We are getting our asses kicked!" and I'm like "Noooo, you are kicking your own asses!".
Hitting your own party is the funniest shit ever. Our dnd party was in a pretty epic battle, the wizard was moving up to get in range for some serious fireballs, then my fighter threw a throwing axe, got a nat1. Rolled a d8 to see where it would go, and hit the wizard right in the back, dropping him prone. In our minds, the way it played out, had us crying hysterically for a solid 3 minutes.
I had a similar TPK in which I was a player. We were playing d20 CoC where we were part of an investigative expeditionary force that was secretly funded by a shadow government, think Bilderberg or Bohemian Grove. Because of our connection, the GM decided to open up the d20 Armory for us. I wasn't too interested in it until they showed me the body armor but two of the players went nuts with it unbeknownst to the rest of us. So, we're at the start of the first session and the GM gives us the mission to go investigate sightings of abominations near a small town in the Appalachians. Our first combat starts when we encounter two hillbillies trying to drive us off of their land with a shoot first and ask questions later attitude. The player who I will refer to as 'K' decides to open combat by throwing an incendiary grenade. Which he fumbles and drops on himself. The GM, then, asks to see his equipment to check if he was carrying anything else that could ignite and add to the hijinks of blowing oneself up. The GM's eyes grow large as he looks over the list of equipment, he looks up at us and plainly says "There is a massive explosion and you are all dead. In fact, there is now a massive wildfire blazing through the mountains uncontrollably." The rest of us are dumbfounded, surely K is dead but all of that? GM then shows us K's equipment list so we can see that he was carrying several bundles of flares, grenades, and about 30 sticks of dynamite. For shits and giggles we rolled out the damage and concluded that we all took roughly 400 damage each. So, the session ended during the first encounter before the GM had rolled a single die. Afterwards, we forbade K from carrying any explosives.
Damn that’s harsh…but also, that K sounds exactly like me. I’m usually the demolition person in our games
Plot twist. Every character made was a descendent of those Nazi Mummy experiments, and this was all part of an ancient curse to up the mummy’s numbers.
Love war stories Seth, thank you! Have really been finding use in your Call of Cthulhu videos, my players appreciate you as well.
Seth is such a great GM that his 1st TPK is pretty much a triple TPK + a victory of the PCs!
I laughed out loud once I heard Dweebles say that he´d use a handgrenade. I just knew it´s gonna go south!
My dice are evil. They kill my PCs with extreme prejudice when I'm dming and fail everything I try when I'm playing
I was deep in the bowls of TH-cam yesterday...as one does during an Ice Storm... and found a Kiwi TH-camr with the channel name "Scott Brown Carpentry" I got a good chuckle out of it.
Thanks! Now I have to watch his channel to see if he ever has a showing.
My first TPK was in the CoC module Mr. Corbitt. I was running a one shot where my PC were teens during summer break who all lived in the same neighborhood and ended up befriending Mr. Corbitt and the module took a WAY different route. But they all died when they failed too stop Yogg-Sototh from being summoned and died. It was a great time and we still talk about it too this day.
My last TPK was in D&D, when the group couldn't buy a hit off of some snakes and the snakes couldn't miss. I just decided that the snakes slithered away and the players woke up an hour later.
The first TPK I ever witnessed was in the first RPG I ever ran which was the first one I ever played. If you've ever played Keep on the Borderlands you'll know there is a bit of a "humorous" encounter on the way to the Caves. Yup, that hermit and his little kittykat took out the first adventuring party any of us had ever seen. Don't know how I ever got my players back round the table.
My first TPK was literally the first time my group played 5e. My friend had convinced us to try it out, which we were reluctant to do because we had long been fans of 2e. He ran the Death House part of the Curse of Strahd. On the way to the house, he rolled up a random encounter. It was a Revenant. We were level 1. We all died.
Seth. Wanted to let you know that I took this adventure idea (stole it) and did a one-shot Delta Green adventure. IT. WAS. AWESOME!!! Thanks Seth for all you do for TTRPG and me secifically.
"That's not how you shoot your buddy, this is how you shoot your buddy!" Brilliant.
Its this sort of scenario that brings home that there is no real winner when a player cheats to avoid "failure" and messing up like this.
From the way you described your story it seemed like you had a blast, your players had fun and they really went in with it. Maybe its the fact it was a 1 shot and they went in with low expectations for survival, but its still telling that they got into the spirit of things and joking around with their own comedic deaths as it all went to hell.
The deadliest monster you never want to encounter: a fellow player with a fumble streak.
The GMs wish they could homebrew something half so terrifying.
First TPK:
Horus Heresy campaign, Raven Guard Legion players falling on a Slaanesh Demon Pit with a World Eater PC in rage killing two of them and leaving the rest for the Keeper of Secrets
PC psychology: throwing the grenade and collapsing the tunnel brings this disastrous one-shot to a quick end.
My longest fumble chain was as GM for TSR's original Marvel Superheroes back in the 80's. It was a reverse fumble-chain. Every roll I made for the villains was one the best rolls I ever did...which was brutal on the heroes. Even the random events like traffic and weather went against the poor schlubs. A nice palette-clensing mini-adventure turned out to be a drawn out massacre leaving one hero without an arm and everyone else hospitalized, de-powered or comatose.
When it comes to the probabilities of dice, I’ve found it doesn’t matter how much you may “know” about statistics and the randomness of just rolling polyhedrons. Even with post-graduate level education in math and probability, some people will still roll a bunch of dice, and choose the ones with the highest result, proudly proclaiming, “This one rolls high, so it shall be mine this game.” One of my old GMs also used to say you had to try using all of your dice over time, otherwise the abandoned ones who cry themselves to sleep every night will seek their revenge when they return.
Seth made a deal with cuthullu, evolving beyond the need for a chair and a desk...
Rewatch here. I still find this super funny.
I am the Evil DM. Excuse me, while I go and TPK my group of players. [evil laugh: hah, hah, hah!]
Oh wait. What is this! They TPKed themselves?!
Sorry, but that is a boring approach.
Much better when the players (as here) do it all by themselves!
@@larsdahl5528 Yep, you're right. Added another line to be more relevant and to add more humor.
I remember when you first mentioned The Fiendish Nazi Mummies of the Third Reich in a video, and I was disappointed I'd never get to hear the story of it. But I never in a million years thought the adventure would exceed my expectations. Well played, Seth.
I was pretty sure I'd mentioned it in a video once, but couldn't remember which one (or ones). It's such a wonderfully over-the-top title that I always love saying it.
@@SSkorkowsky I believe it was in your "One Shots" video.
Sounds like a real laugh! :) I feel obliged to point out that the laws of probability don't state you shouldn't see fumble chains; in fact they imply that given enough rolls, it's impossible *not* to see a fumble chain of any length. Definitely part of the fun of these games!
I am not at all sure that I have ever....ever... in years... had a TPK that was solely due to the players killing themselves....
This was GOLD!
"The Fiendish Nazi Mummies of the Third Reich" should definitely be a module.
A large collection of stooges vs an assortment of zombies
One of my players wanted to take over for a while to do "Descent into Avernus." We were tpk'd in the first combat encounter. I laughed it off, but not everyone was so amused.
I want to thank you, or more honestly I owe you multiple thanks, but I'll post them all here instead of cluttering up comment in multiple threads.
For background, I started gaming back in the 1e days and played 1e-2e even after joining the military. I was able to game until I was stationed in a unit that spent way to much time in the field training to have any free time to have any hobby much less a time sink like gaming. Then 9-11 happened and I went from training to deploying ALL the time.
Years later, when I was close to retiring from the military, I stumbled back into gaming, and some time after that I started DMing again. I always thought I was a good DM, but then a few years ago I found your site and by watching the videos I knocked the rough edges off my DMing skills and have tightened up my shot grouping a lot (though I still have NO skill in NPC voices). So thanks for helping me be a better DM, well the guys from my Monday game should be think you here for that.
Also, watching your 'how to' videos opened me up to trying Traveller and Call of Cthulhu. I played Traveller Little Black Books a few time back in High School, but was never that into it. I avoided CoC back in the day (my flavor of horror is very Poe and I never liked the utter sanity crushing of Lovecraft. Plus as a person of faith, I always feel there should be at least a glimmer of hope/good that is alien to Lovecraft). However, after your how to videos I have tried them both, and love Traveller (a modified Traveller 2300 is the basis for my preferred home brew SCI FI setting now). I'll talk CoC specifically a little later. So, again thanks for opening new gaming doors to me.
More importantly, a few years ago my young daughters asked to start gaming (we had tried gaming when they were young with a 'Mouseguard' type game, but it was a total failure and I figured they would never want to game after that). As we began to game, and they invited their best friend from school and her dad (another old school gamer from back in the day), we watched a lot of your videos and the girls had a great grasp of the art of gaming before ever rolling the first dice. So, thank you for helping bring a new generation into the gaming world.
Not only did they like your player philosophy videos etc, they watched your war stories and LOVE all of them. So much so that 'Bonesaw” 'Peanut-Head” and “Bombshell” are in their gaming lexicon without me ever having used any of them in my games. I love to see how cautious they are when their character finds anything magical dreading to hear “I'm the Bonesaw, I dub you my new Peanut-Head”.
Now, and a HUGE thank you for this one. A few months ago, my younger daughter asked me if I thought she was good enough to run a game idea she had. I said a whole hearted yes and let her run it. I ended up left seat / right seat with her behind the DM screen, (helping with how to use the rules, pace the adventure etc) but the game was 100% her idea her narrative and her improv on the crazy things her sister and their friend did. She had watched your GM videos and your 'How to run a Heist' video, and whit that she knocked it out of the park. I will say that Heist games are something I have never quite pulled off well myself, So thanks, and since one day I may be on the player side of the screen in a real face to face game ( I promise to follow all of your advice from 'When a player GMs their Game Master video) I will owe you one!
Now the final thanks and why it is all here on this video. This video is the grain of sand that grew a pearl. The girls watched it a few years ago and made on off hand remark that it was an interesting idea. So, I took ideas from it and last Halloween ran a 1890s paddle boat trip up the Nile and a camel ride into Nabta Playa Egypt to ancient evil temples (using Call of Cthulhu as the rules). All the PCs but 1 died (they did decide to make a last stand and go down fighting with the NPC instead of trying to run and have a chance to live) and the one that survived spent the rest of his days in a Cairo Insane Asylum. They focused on themselves and their 'this is cool lets explore' and forgot about the NPC that was showing signs of being dominated by something and let him do his thing for days (despite my hints and foreshadowing) which allowed the NPC to succumb to the evil pharaoh's spirit and then release the zombie and skeleton Army on the group. However, despite the near TPK they all had a blast. They loved the game and the rules and the feel of Sanity losses and checks. Then this year for Halloween, I did a return adventure to the same place using a 1940s end of WWII Monuments Men story. This time all the PCs made it out alive, along with some of the NPCs (and only 1 NPC ended up insane at the end of the game). They resisted the temptations to help the evil spirits and stopped the NPC (ended up killing him after he went crazy and stabbed one PC) that was closest to releasing the undead army again. They slowed down the ghouls enough to escape, and had a GREAT car chase scene across the desert to escape the dog/lion/lizard desert hunter monsters the ghouls sent after them. They loved every second of it.
So thanks for starting a tradition of a special Halloween one off game with CoC that I would have NEVER done if it wasn't for your videos here.
Hahaha, awesome.
What a night that would have been to experience!
The TPK I remember most fondly, was many years ago. I was a fairly new player, and had inherited a Druid from a previous player. This was in AD&D.
We had to rescue our contact, who was trapped in a dungeon. We managed to sneak in and find him, but stuff went wrong and we were captured(basically, dude was deaf, and made so much noise during our attempts to explain the escape plan that we were discovered). Instead of killing us, the bad guys did some kind of ritual that created duplicates of us and then turned us really old. We were then locked up seperately.
The rogue managed to get out and kill his duplicate(which turned him young again). He freed my character, then tried and failed to backstab my duplicate - promptly getting killed.
I was alone, hidden in the garden and trying to come up with some kind of plan, when the bad guys marched our contact out in front of the castle to execute him.
I panicked and rushed through an ill-thought-through plan to free him (involving fog-spells, entanglements and burning) and got killed.
Our contact was executed and the rest of the party was left to rot in the dungeons, eventually dying of old age.
Best part was about 4 years later, with a new group (same DM), and our adventure started feeling vaguely familiar. I didn't realize that it was the same one until we'd already been caught and turned old(this time before attempting to rescue our contact.
The rogue managed to escaped and kill his duplicate, then saved 2 others from the group. They tried rescuing our contact... and got caught when he made so much noise during their attempt to explain the escape plan that they were discovered.
Dude was executed (again), and the party left to die of old age in the dungeons - again.
It was hilarious.
... no-one ever thought to shush him and communicate through notes or something.
Thanks for this, as it's reminded me of one of my friends at university, whose actions in several games resulted in the common response "I can't believe you did that!" (one of which resulted in an all-but-one-PK in an Earthdawn game).
One time during a combat the fighter and ranger in our group both managed to hit me. It was one of the many combats where I was sent to the floor got back up and then was sent straight back to the floor.
"...I know... but I can only do it ONCE..."
My first TPK didn't actually have any deaths. It was a CoC game, and my group had to break into a museum to get a cursed artefact out before an exhibit which would turn people crazy. Unforunately, they were incredibly unlucky, and not very sneaky. They got caught by security, fought back, kept running, tuned on MORE alarms, and then the police came. All of my three players got caught and sent to jail.
The first time I ever used a grenade in an RPG it ended the entire encounter on the first initiative count. The enemies were bunched up and the system was Savage Worlds which means damage die can explode (aka when you roll the highest result you can roll again and add the result). Long story short, one MVP damage die kept exploding a bunch of times, so the 3d6 damage turned into something ridiculously high. Those were supposed to be difficult enemies too - hard to hit, harder to damage, dangerous attacks and fast movement but no such luck for our DM
Grenades are a death curse in coc. My first tpk, the dnd group wanted to go dragon hunting.
I had a great instance in a GURPS game where one PC was in a desperate grapple with the equivalent of a T-600, so another PC, after failing to damage this thing with his guns, decided to throw a grenade at it. Specifically, a Russian RPG-43, which did the job, but also killed his friend as well as the other two friends who just stepped around the corner to help out.
Hah! I laughed when you talked about grenades and Traveller. It was during the first time I played Traveller that I muffed up a grenade toss, fumbling and dropping it at my feet. Yeah the carnage was awesome and it did so much damage to my party that the adventure ended prematurely! Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not!
My first TPK was similar in that the party ran down a dead end, got cornered and killed. But they did wander into a boss battle without resting and they could have easily retreated, rested and come back, so I didn't feel that bad about it. Other than the decision not to rest, the party didn't kill themselves though.
Now more than ever I am in love with the idea of naming one-shots with B-Movie titles
If this was my group we'd all probably think that this was the best session ever, like it sounds like an absolute blast if you're willing to just laugh at character deaths.
Yeah, a regular campaign session with beloved heroes is one thing, but coming in to a 1-shot that's clearly meant to have a high fatality rate, it's an absolute blast.
Good thing there didn't happen to be a showing at that tomb that day...
Aww yiss! Perfect timing :D Holy shit, I'd be scared of grenades too
Ah cyberpunk 2020 fumble table. I once ran a game where all the player characters fumbled and kept on shooting the same player blowing off his limbs one at a time.
6:20 Oh, how I know that feeling! tried to throw a grenade out of a starting plane on our escape. A "01" is also bad in CoC. The rest is history and a lot of debris.
I had one player who just had running bad luck for years which forced me into going with a sort of "Immortal " style character like Higlander for him ( though he didnt know that part till a long time later) it was the only way i could come up with to keep to keep the long campaign running . The number of ways he would die are long and comic indeed
Once I saw nine 20 in a row...and it was to hit roll from wizard to a fighter as a result of a fumble.
"Yep. Killed him."